


The Truth We Both Know

by SourisSouris



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Beginnings, F/M, Love, Romance, Touchstone - Freeform, all things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 09:42:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8244748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SourisSouris/pseuds/SourisSouris
Summary: "And all the choices would then lead to this very moment...One wrong turn, and we wouldn't be sitting here together."





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the very first thing I've ever written and had been sitting in the dark corner of my laptop until someone reminded me of it and asked me to post it... so here goes. The usual... xx

...and as he leaned in, the world disappeared. Something had shifted in his mind and his very soul and there was no going back. All there was were her eyes, suddenly so deep and sparkling blue with a shade of greyish green, looking into his, quietly waiting as the silence flowed back. He always thought of her as a wild cat. A panther. Walking around on cat-paws, so quietly, so stealth-like. And then, when least expected, she'd pounce - and rip your throat. Or, in his case, his heart out...

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwypEGk4JD0>

But how did this happen? How did he allow it to happen? And how did he not see it coming...? He, who had always been a few steps ahead, predicting his enemy's moves, taking great pride in that ability of his. Always looking over his shoulder, always in control... Suddenly caught off guard. Panicked by the unfamiliar feeling. His heart pounding, he put all of his might into gathering his thoughts and his composure, giving up the futite attempt to rein them it...

 _He can't let her see_... his first and foremost thought. But why? He'd mastered his "panic face" well. Nobody would ever guess.... Nobody but her. Who was he kidding, anyway. Nobody on this whole goddamned planet ever knew him or could read him as well as her. The sheer horror in his soul whenever he'd encountered things that didn't make sense, that could not be controlled or conquered. Not monsters or aliens - those were all too familiar fixtures of his everyday life by now... But **_feelings_** \- that was a whole another story... The matters of the heart.

**_"Tears... He had no idea how to say tears."_ **

" _Mulder_..."                                                            

He wasn't sure if she had really said his name or if he was just imagining it, as his mind drifted to horizons that he had no idea existed...

Either way, his look slipped down to her lips, slightly parted, revealing her perfect teeth and letting her shallow breath escape almost visibly. She never once looked away. He caught himself caressing the fullness of her mouth with his eyes, feeling so drawn to it, wishing his mouth was on hers, suddenly overwhelmed by a kind of yearning he never thought he was capable of.... not anymore, anyway...

For the first time he felt clearly being drawn to this petite redhead, someone he'd known for 7 years now. Together they lived, breathed and ate their work for 7 years... day by day. There wasn't much they wouldn't know about each other - from their life-stories, their triumphs and downfalls, their stupid mistakes and little pet-peeves, things they were passionate about and things they hated with passion. Things they hated about each other even, but were always able to laugh them away. Their stubbornness and bickering. Their favorite places to eat and least favorite states to travel to. Their biorhythms. The little changes in the tone of their voices signaling trouble... For 7 years they'd lived in this kind of "forced marriage" now... so what has changed all of a sudden...

All of a sudden? Or has it been a long time coming? How could he not have seen the warning signs? Or had he seen them and yet chose to ignore them...?

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiqxn3iOmxY>

How many times had he seen her in all kinds of situations, dangers threatening her life, crucial moments that formed who she had become – who **_they_** had become. He saw her at her lowest, held her hand through her losses, through the hypnosis when she was remembering all the awful things that happened to her – thanks to him, he heard her cries and saw her eyes widen in fear. He held her in his arms when she passed out, pulled her naked body out of a block of ice and pressed his lips against hers to help her breathe. He carried her lifeless body hoisted over his shoulder across an ice-berg, for crying out loud. He's seen it all...

And yet – he feels as if he is now **_seeing_** her for the first time – for who she really is. Not the extremely, ridiculously intelligent scientist, the strong, determined, loyal and passionate partner she's been to him this whole time, standing by his side, never once wavering in her belief, never once betraying his trust. Not even a doctor anymore... He's seeing a young, beautiful, vulnerable woman that she had tried so hard to hide away from him for all those years and he'd probably never allowed himself to see in her either – and now he knew why. Because knowing that, knowing how fragile she could be and how easily she could be taken away from him, allowing himself to **_care_** for her the way he did right now, would paralyze him and drive him crazy with worry, the constant need to protect her. And he knew that she'd hate him for that. The ever so independent, self-reliant, emancipated woman that she was...

It wasn't until she got sick and he almost lost her that she allowed him to peek into her heart and discover the soft, fragile side of her, the warm and fuzzy insides – when she barred her very soul in her diary entries... They never talked about it, but he knew after reading them that something had changed for good, finally leading up to this moment when he was sitting here, inches away from her, and felt as though her very soul was pouring out of her eyes, her tears, her quivering lips...

And suddenly he feels an urge to " _fix her_ ", to save her once again, to take her in his arms and take those lips by his, parting them with his tongue and reaching deep inside to finally **_know_** her, for the first time, for who she really is... He feels blood rising to his cheeks and, embarrassingly, parts of his body that he had been numbing for a longer time than he cared to remember, by constantly running after the truth – while the truth was right in front of him this whole time...

" ** _The truth is now IN YOU_** ," he told her once...

So what happened then?

Looking at her and thinking back to the time when he almost lost her, realizing how close they were and how much time he'd let slip away since then, he struggles once again to regain his composure, chastising himself for letting those thoughts even cross his mind... How could he...?

She deserved so much more than that. She was his partner and he had been blessed to be calling her a friend. As improbable as it seemed, they did have an instant connection on a level that neither one of them quite understood, but they never questioned it, just took it for what it was. There was a line that had been drawn in the sand a long time ago – when exactly? – never to be crossed... They never talked about it, they didn’t need to. It was a matter of respect and trust – the two cornerstones their relationship was built upon from the very start...

\---

Was it the first time they had spent a night together in that shabby motel room somewhere in the woods of Oregon? The night when she came to him running and without as much as a flinch shed her purple robe to reveal the porcelain skin of her strong back, her chest heaving with fear, horror in her eyes...

" _I need you to look at something_ ," she blurted out.

And looking he was – as if there was another choice... Even in the poor light of a single candle, he got quite an eyeful, taking in the softness of her milky skin, her full quivering lips pulsating with blood, her flushed cheeks... Only then did she realize _how_ he was looking at her and her tone changed, from frantic to slightly annoyed, frustrated, her cherry lips pouting.

" _What are they?_ "

She turned around to look at him, her eyes overflowing with fear.

" _They're mosquito bites_ ," he smiled at her horror and the next thing he knew, he got almost knocked down by the force with which she threw herself into his arms, relieved, sobbing...

**_And so it began... The journey they started reluctantly, neither one of them knowing where it would take them, only to end up in this very moment...._ **

Later that night she was lying casually on his bed, wrapped in the covers, only her feet sticking out, feeling perfectly safe and content in the presence of this man that she had only met 48 hours ago – a legend she heard so much about, but never quite imagined the depths he'd take her in...

\---

Sitting across from him on the couch in her own apartment now, looking deep into his dark grey eyes, she still felt so compelled by his innocence, the depth of his curiosity and almost boyish excitement about anything beyond the "normal world", slightly veiled over by the years of anguish and sorrow, the perpetual losses of his life... She felt the familiar urge to take his hand in hers, to pull him closer and wrap her arms around him, to comfort him, for he was such a lost soul...

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8mr-gcgoI>

At only 39 he was left with no one, all alone in this world, just like her. Logically, it seemed inevitable for them to find themselves in this situation, this moment right here...

A part of her was oddly calm, thinking how natural it would be, after teetering on the edge for so long, to allow themselves the fall into each other’s arms. Wondering how it hadn't happened all those years ago...

The other, bigger, engulfing part of hers, was completely freaking the f*ck out...


End file.
